Upcoming Windows 7 Phones

My contract renewal date is quickly approaching, and I am very anxious and ready to ditch my iPhone for a Windows 7 Phone device. However, nearly all of the Windows Phone 7 devices on the market will be over a year old, and I do not want to fall into that trap again like I did with my iPhone (which became discontinued a few weeks after I bought it with AT&T having the audacity to charge me $150 for it). So, I'm looking to wait out until a new/next-gen device releases before I update my phone.

Any info out on the market? Most of the smartphone manufacturers have kept very hush hush, and we may not see any information about them until the CES in Winter. But I'm hopeful perhaps someone else may have an ear on the market floor.

I love love windows for a desktop/laptop, but had a bad experience with windows mobile 4-5 (although i did enjoy being able to access things in command prompt). Also the windows app market is an issue, there's like nothing compared to ios/android.... :/

I'm sure you are a minority for wanting a windows phone phone here but why do you?

cTurtle saidI love love windows for a desktop/laptop, but had a bad experience with windows mobile 4-5 (although i did enjoy being able to access things in command prompt). Also the windows app market is an issue, there's like nothing compared to ios/android.... :/

I'm sure you are a minority for wanting a windows phone phone here but why do you?

Windows Mobile is not Windows 7 Phone. They are two very different mobile platforms.

This is Windows 7 Phone:

This is Windows 6.1 CE (Windows Mobile):

Now to answer your question; Microsoft has been very carefully producing the Windows Phone 7 to be very robust, with many features that I could never get in an Apple phone.

One being Microsoft Office is integrated right into my phone; being able to open my Excel/Word 2010 lab files remotely off of the Microsoft sync drive and update them across all my computers and tablet every time I click *save* = amazing.

It's integrated with my Xbox and Xbox Live account as well as my Zune account. And all my Windows devices recognize it in case I want to stream data from device to device.

The iPhone/iPod touches are very integrated into the Apple product landscape. Great for Apple users, not so great for people who do not own other Apple products that can integrate with it. iTunes does not work too hot on the PC. As an engineer, I NEED to have a PC; most of the software I need to run on my devices for data manipulation, formulaic calculation, complex math structures, and data acquisition are not written for Apple. Additionally, am I am very familiar with most of the command lines and advanced control services in Windows, and I have no reason to want to switch to Apple.

So to sum up:

Apple brand = higher price (paying for the brand, a brand I would have to buy from the ground up since I don't own any Apple computers)Engineering software, much of cannot install onto Apple platforms.My entertainment (Xbox) better integrated into Windows Ecosystem.I am already very familiar with Windows higher level functions and command line structures.And from a completely shallow perspective: I like the Windows UI for all of it's products. It's a preference.

Now, to focus in on the Windows 7 Phone again: with the new Mango update, the device is perhaps one of the most optimized devices on the market. IE9 renders beautifully on the phone (will be Hardware Accelerated and supports HTML5), hands free texting (Speech to Text feature) and I love the Metro interface. I could go on and on, but in general, it's the phone for me. Just like the Apple iOS is device style for others.

I think it sounds like a GREAT set of new functions on this phone! Hopefully the hardware manufacturers 'do right' by this new software.

The reason I personally prefer the iPhone is that all of the other smartphones I've owned promised the world and never seemed to deliver. The Apple products all seem to just work. (Again, this is IMHO). I recently (within the past 2 years) bought my first Macbook Pro (I have used MS WIndows starting with 3.1) then over the past year, I've purchased all my other Apple products.

And BTW, when I was on the Windows platform (XP, 2000, 7) I never had a problem with iTunes - so I don't know what happened for you.

If you wanna scroll yourself to dead before getting anything done, you get a WM7 phone. Symbian would always be my favorite of all time but since its rotting, I say stick with IOS. As much as I hate helping apple to get richer, iOS is the stable one of all. ANDROID is nice but still need a lot of work.

If you must have to go with WM phone wait for Nokia. Their conference is sometime in September and I'm sure they will introduce something with build quality similar to N9. HTC is just a piece of junk

Windows Phone 7 is awesome. But too many people have had bad or mediocre experiences with Windows Mobile in the past. And that is reason enough for most of them to not even give WP7 a try. Which is too bad. It's a completely new platform. The UI is innovative. And it was built with social networking in mind. No need to install apps for FB, Twitter, etc. It's all integrated into the WP7 messaging. It just works.

But I'm starting to lose faith. MS seems to be moving really slow on updates. And no new hardware since launch. Meanwhile, the Android offerings are plentiful. There are Android phones available on all carriers in the US, including the MVNO operators. And there are phones for different price ranges as well.

I think MS is stalling until they finalize the details of Windows 8. Supposedly it's supposed to have much tighter integration with the next version of Windows Phone. So if I were you, I'd just pick up a used WP7 phone from Craigslist or ebay. And use that until the next generation of WP7 phones come out.